UW Roster Review, No. 2-99: Pritchard Plays It Rough Trying to Move Up
The Monday spring football practice moved at a fast-paced clip. University of Washington offensive and defensive units systematically rotated in and out, replacing each other in a hurry-up fashion. Players passed each other likes cars on a highway.
Alongside Lake Washington, everything taking place had sort of a rhythm and a pace to it until the respective Husky third units lined up against each other and emotions began to bubble over.
Junior walk-on wide receiver David Pritchard ran a medium pass route up the left side. Redshirt freshman cornerback Kasen Kinchen shadowed him closely. The ball fell incomplete. Somewhere in this one-on-one exchange, maybe even building over a couple of plays, Kinchen did something to greatly upset Pritchard.
The next thing everyone knew, these players were swinging violently at each other, with Pritchard the UW pass receiver jumping on top of the defensive back and delivering even more blows before they were separated.
Who said you need a scholarship to passionately care about your place in the Husky football hierarchy?
Going down the roster in numerical order, this is another of our post-spring assessments of all of the Husky talent at hand, gleaned from a month of observations, as a way to keep everyone engaged during the offseason.
Pritchard is No. 30 in this video clip, sharing it with walk-on defensive back Sean Toomey Stout.
Pritchard got involved in what was by far the most hot-tempered dust-up of the 15 Husky spring practices. He drew his coach's attention, which was not necessarily a good thing.
"Obviously, Pritchard, from a coach's standpoint, in this situation he gets us a penalty you know and it backs us up to like second-and-20," Husky receivers coach Junior Adams pointed out. "From a coaching standpoint, it's my job to teach him we're in this situation and we can't do that."
Pritchard is a Husky veteran of sorts, participating in his fourth season in the UW football program after walking on from football powerhouse Eastside Catholic High School in the Seattle suburbs.
The receiver hasn't appeared in a regular-season UW game yet, so he's probably feeling the clock ticking on him to do everything he can to get noticed and maybe rewarded.
"Pritchard actually has been playing pretty good for us the last couple days," Adams said at this spring football midpoint. "He's been making some good solid catches and playing hard."
Yet catches, not punches, is the only way he'll earn Husky advancement. He's in a receiver room stacked with scholarship talent. His toughness is admirable to a point, but it's not going to land a Pritchard promotion.
"I want them to play hard and block these guys and be aggressive and all that kind of stuff," Adams said. "Love the mindset, but we've just got to make sure we reel it in."
There's fighting for game time, which is different from simply fighting.
Pritchard's 2021 Outlook: Projected reserve wide receiver
UW Service Time: None
Stats: None
Individual Honors: None
Pro prospects: None
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